


what are we living for

by Elizabeth (anghraine)



Series: Rime Royal [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Family Issues, Gen, Language, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 10:16:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6979666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anghraine/pseuds/Elizabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Skywalker family does not always prosper, but they survive, long enough to fight, long enough to pass a legacy of resistance down through the twists and turns of their generations. </p>
<p>Language is resistance, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what are we living for

 

 

> Whatever happens, I’ll leave it all to chance,  
>  Another heartache, another failed romance.  
>  On and on, does anybody know what we are living for?  
>  I guess I’m learning, I must be warmer now,  
>  I’ll soon be turning, round the corner now.  
>  Outside the dawn is breaking,  
>  But inside in the dark I’m aching to be free.  
> 
> —“The Show Must Go On,” Queen

**1**

Aunt Beru calls Luke’s grandmother _valiya_.

It is not custom. Not as far as he knows: in Alsaraic, one pays respect to an older woman as _zafi. Valiya_ means mother, family—real family.

By blood, of course, Aunt Beru is no Skywalker; wife of a Skywalker’s stepson makes for a tenuous tie at best. But she loved Shmi Skywalker as a daughter, and more to the point, listened to her as a daughter. 

And so she is the one who, from his earliest childhood, fills Luke’s ears with a dying language: _ma_ (no) and _lhai_ (sand) and, of course, _sati_ (aunt)—and _Valiya Shmi_.

**2**

For Luke, Alsaraic has always been a sickly thing, clinging to its last shreds of life far from home. There is Aunt Beru, so careful to bombard him with it; there is Uncle Owen and his handful of words and phrases; there is Luke, who’s always known that it will die with him.

But that knowledge is different, after—well, after. He mourns his uncle and aunt, dreams of those charred skeletons over and over and _over_ , and then there’s Ben dying under Vader’s lightsaber and Biggs exploding into flames, and everything he once knew is gone. His first grief is for the people, always most of all for people.

He does not think of language until after the reward ceremony, sitting alone in one of the hills near Massassi, and out of nowhere it hits him: nobody speaks it now, nobody at all, except Luke. He’ll never again hear his family’s language, never again talk to anyone in it, and without talking, what’s the point?

**3**

He’s wrong, of course.

When Luke was a little boy, Uncle Owen only kept the farm through constant work and a dash of luck—it was Aunt Beru he always heard, Aunt Beru who took care that he heard Alsaraic morning and night. It is his first language and comes to his tongue readily. Whether he stubs his toe, mumbles to himself, loses his temper, flies into excitement, Alsaraic is there waiting for him.

“What does that mean?” Leia once asks, slightly curious.

Luke flushes; he’s heard Leia swear, but it doesn’t mean he wants to explain _khavk_ to her. But she insists, and when he stumbles through an explanation, just laughs. 

**4**

Nobody can take Leia’s mother tongue from her; it’s Basic, as the Alderaanian languages died out long ago, subsumed into Basic like most of the Core. Only old Ngaalish was preserved at all, a language of record and ritual that Leia learned as a schoolgirl, but never cared much about. The rest of the Alderaanians carry on the old rituals, Ngaalish with them, but for Leia, rote words cannot dull the edge of their loss.

But when she hears Luke muttering to himself in something else, something completely unfamiliar to her, she’s sympathetic, and fascinated too. She wouldn’t recognize a word of Alsaraic in writing, but when Luke speaks it, she feels it almost as a living thing, glimmering on the edges of her mind. 

She doesn’t want to intrude on something that isn’t hers, but when she carefully asks _if you don’t mind, how would you say—_ Luke lights up like a supernova.

It’s an unfortunate comparison.

**5**

C-3PO does not remember being programmed, or his first period of functionality. 

It does not trouble him. The memories he does have are quite terrible enough, and generally his present, too. But he does regret the blanks in his databases now and then.

One of those occasions is when he hears Master Luke muttering to himself  _Come on, Skywalker, what’s wrong with you today?_ An odd thing to say, Threepio thinks, not that anyone listens to him—but odder still, it’s in a form of communication he hasn’t heard since…since…

He does not recall.

**6**

The first time Threepio responds to one of his asides in perfect Alsaraic, Luke gasps like a bad actor in a holovid, but it’s real, it’s completely sincere, because he knew Threepio spoke just about everything but he didn’t _think_ , he didn’t—

Luke nearly hugs him, metal body and all. At last, he can talk, really talk, babbling so excitedly that he’s surprised Threepio can parse the words at all—and somewhere, there’s somebody else, someone who cared enough to program it into a protocol droid.

Not long after that, they escape Hoth, and there’s training with Yoda on Dagobah, and then Cloud City, the carbon-freezing chamber, Vader saying that he— _he!_ —is Luke’s father.

It’s like a punch to the gut. Luke would give anything to disbelieve, but before he can begin to piece himself together, Vader hits him with another blow.

“Search your feelings,” he says in Alsaraic, “you know it to be true”—and Luke does know, he does.

**7**

_Luke_ , his father calls across the stars, and Luke cannot help but reply, 

_Valì…?_

_Aiyu_ , says Vader, the word he never thought he’d hear, in the language he never thought he’d hear, and in the midst of all the horror it’s—he can feel—it’s—

_Valì_ is all he can say to himself, _valiyat_ , _ai-valiyat_ and when he puts it in Basic it sounds wrong, weak, everyone shaking their heads sadly at “he’s my father.” Vader himself (Anakin, _Anakin_ ) has become a hopeless, apathetic slave of the Emperor’s will, his voice and his dull anger the same thing Luke heard countless times back home, everything but _aiyu_ in insistent Basic; he’s heard that, too, every word on their tongues from the masters, but Shmi never did that, she taught her son better than that, and for a moment he’s just wildly furious.

“ _Fa valiyat khiris ai-dûru_ ,” he says coldly, _then my father is truly dead_ , and though Anakin says nothing, Luke hears him recoil from it, hears him hear. Then he remembers: condemnation is easy for the freeborn, however bitter to a freeborn child of slavery, so even now he will not abandon him.

And in the end, Anakin gasps _aiyat, aiyat_ through dying breaths, and  _pà khariyad eir-yanù … eir-yanù—_ his last words are in Alsaraic, their words, his own words.

**Author's Note:**

> I am not a linguist, at all, but I had fun with this anyway. The Alsaraic used/implied in the fic:
> 
> _ai, eir, etc_ : forms of 'to be' (is, were), usually attached to the predicate  
>  _aiya_ : child (fem.; refers to offspring of any age, not a young person); daughter  
>  _aiyat_ : my child (cf. _valiyat_ ); my daughter, my son  
>  _aiyu_ : child (masc.); son  
>  _-ad_ : second person possessive (suffix, attached to default fem.)  
>  _-at_ : first person possessive (suffix, attached to default fem.)  
>  _dûru_ : dead (masc.)  
>  _fa_ : then  
>  _-is_ : -ly (suffix, forms adverbs)  
>  _khavk_ : fuck  
>  _khariya_ : sibling (fem.); sister  
>  _khariyad_ : your sibling (cf. _valiyat_ ); your sister, your brother  
>  _khariyu_ : sibling (masc.); brother  
>  _khir_ : true; genuine; real  
>  _khiris_ : really; truly  
>  _lhai_ : sand (uncount.)  
>  _ma_ : no  
>  _pà_ : tell (second person imper.)  
>  _sati_ : father's sibling (fem.); aunt (only paternal)  
>  _valì_ : parent (masc.); father  
>  _valiya_ : parent (fem.); mother  
>  _valiyat_ : my parent (technically fem., functionally neut.); my mother _or_ my father  
>  _yanù_ : correct (masc.)  
>  _zafi_ : elder (fem.)


End file.
